Denny Burkhttp://www.dennyburk.com
A commentary on theology, politics, and cultureMon, 19 Nov 2018 23:22:34 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.825262794DennyBurkhttps://feedburner.google.comSome reflections on the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Societyhttp://www.dennyburk.com/some-reflections-on-the-annual-meeting-of-the-evangelical-theological-society/
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 18:24:17 +0000http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=35580I attended the 70th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in Denver, Colorado last week. For those of you who don’t know, ETS is a society of theologians and biblical scholars who are dedicated to biblical inerrancy and a belief in the Trinity. At the annual meeting, members come together to present academic papers, meet with publishers, and catch up with old friends. What follows are some reflections about this year’s meeting.

1. Continuationism vs. Cessationism

The theme this year was “The Holy Spirit,” and the most stimulating session I attended on that theme was a debate on cessationism vs. continuationism. Tom Scheiner and Lig Duncan made the case for cessationsm, and Andrew Wilson and Sam Storms made it for continuationism. I am a convinced cessationist, and that is due in no small part to Tom Schreiner’s influence in my life.

Having said that, I found Andrew Wilson’s rejoinder to be a compelling counterpoint to Schreiner’s recent book. Wilson is always a great presenter, and his response to Schreiner was no exception. Nevertheless, I think Wilson and Storms failed to quell my concern about the weaknesses of their position.

At the end of the day, Wilson and Storms were not able to give a convincing case for why OT prophecy and NT prophecy are different. Wilson suggested that some OT prophecy was indeed errant and that we should not be surprised that NT prophecy is as well. But the texts he cited in support of this are dubious at best.

Wilson also tried to argue that while prophetic revelation is inerrant, the prophet’s reporting of that revelation can be flawed. But this fundamentally misunderstands the role of prophets, who not only receive inerrant revelation but who are enabled by the Holy Spirit to communicate it without error. As the apostle Peter writes, “No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21). The Holy Spirit not only reveals the word, he also enables the prophet to speak “from God.” To deny that this is the case would not only cause problems for the veracity of prophecy but also for the truthfulness of scripture.

It was a stimulating discussion, but I think Schreiner and Duncan made the stronger case.

2. Transgender Affirmation

We are still seeing more presentations from ETS members that affirm LGBT identities. I noted as much three years ago in the immediate aftermath of Obergefell when ETS members expressed support for gay marriage during a particular session. Until this last meeting, I had not seen an ETS member advocate for transgender identities, but that has all changed now. Andy Draycott (a professor at Biola University) presented a paper titled “Walking across Gender in the Spirit? The Vocation of the Church and the Transgender Christian.” Draycott not only argued in favor of transgender identities, he also argued that the symbolism of baptism supports such shifts in personal identity. See Colin Smothers’ detailed critique of the paper here.

It was a stunning presentation to listen to, but it has largely gone under the radar. And yet, it appeared in an “Evangelicals and Gender” section, which means that the paper was vetted by committee members before being accepted into the program. Every member of the steering committee except one is a contributor to an evangelical feminist group called Christians for Biblical Equality. (By the way, does CBE now accept the legitimacy of transgender identities? In addition to this session, there is at least one article that suggests they might.)

I bring this up because the presence of such a paper provokes us to ask the boundaries question again. Is ETS going to be a society that includes affirmation of LGBT identities? If it is, in what sense is it an Evangelical Theological Society? I know this is an old discussion and one that has been fraught with difficulty within the ETS. But how can we avoid it?

The ETS’s doctrinal basis only requires a belief in the Trinity and Inerrancy. Ray Van Neste has argued that in the wardrobe of doctrinal statements, the ETS’s is a bikini. It covers some essential areas, but it leaves us far too exposed in other areas. Is it possible that a member in good standing who affirms Trinity and Inerrancy might come to a conclusion that affirms transgender identities? Apparently, the answer is yes. With our doctrinal basis as thin as it is, on what grounds could anyone possibly object? Should we not expect more of this in the future? I think we should. No question. And that situation will continue until the membership of the society decides that they want a change.

Such a change, however, is very unlikely. The ETS in recent years has shown little interest in drawing more boundaries or in a strict enforcement of the current boundaries. The non-binding gay marriage resolution adopted three years ago only passed after a contentious floor debate. I think all of this indicates that there will be more presentations affirming LGBT identities at future meetings. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.

3. Debate about The Nashville Statement

In day one of ETS, I participated in a panel debating The Nashville Statement. Our session was titled “The Nashville Statement: Promise or Problem for Evangelical Sexual Ethics.” Preston Sprinkle and Joel Willitts made the case against Nashville while Andrew Walker and I made the case for it.

As with earlier critiques of The Nashville Statement, neither Preston nor Joel focused their attention on what the statement says on its own terms. In fact, Preston and Joel expressed a great deal of agreement with the substance of the statement. Rather, they focused on the tone of the statement and its timing. They insisted that a statement like this will do nothing but alienate those outside the church while “harming” certain strugglers within the church. They also said that a statement like this one should have begun with an apology to LGBT people for all the sins that the church has committed against them. Again, this wasn’t a critique of what the statement says but of what it doesn’t say.

The closest thing we got to a substantive critique was Preston’s quibbles about the use of the certain terms like “self-conception,” “transgenderism,” and “homosexual.” But even here, his issue was not with what we meant by those terms but with an alleged lack of clarity or sensitivity.

At the end of the day, I wasn’t persuaded by their critiques of The Nashville Statement. In fact, I think Preston and Joel fundamentally misunderstand what the statement was designed to be. The Nashville Statement was never intended as a culture-war document. It was intended as a church document. It is not a manifesto to the world but a confession for the church. It stakes out no public policy positions. It advocates for no particular piece of legislation or political program. Rather, it was drafted by churchmen and women from a variety of evangelical traditions who aim to catechize God’s people about their place in the true story of the world. And fundamental to that storyline is our “personal and physical design as male and female.”

Yes, The Nashville Statement is direct in what it asserts, but it is a distortion to describe it as harsh or harmful. It is simply a statement that provides confessional guidance for those who need it. And there are many within the evangelical movement who need this kind of biblical clarity.

There is a reason why the boards of Southern Seminary, Cedarville University, Union University, Reformed Theological Seminary, and others have adopted the statement. Language from the statement has also been affirmed by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, the Arkansas Baptist Convention, the Illinois Baptist Convention, and the Calvary Presbytery (PCA) in South Carolina. Evangelical churches and institutions need the kind of clarity that The Nashville Statement provides, and that is what it was designed for.

To critique the statement for failing to appeal to millennials outside the church is like complaining that your car isn’t good at making ice cream. A car is not designed to make ice cream, and it says nothing about the working order of a car that it doesn’t. Likewise, The Nashville Statement was never meant to be a script for evangelism or cultural engagement. But then again, neither is the Baptist Faith and Message or the Westminster Confession. We don’t criticize those faith statements on those grounds, so why criticize The Nashville Statement on those grounds? I don’t think those kinds of critiques are very compelling at all.

In any case, I am very grateful that Preston and Joel chose to be a part of the panel. It was stimulating, even if we failed to resolve our disagreements in the end.

4. Albert Mohler as Vice-President

One more item of note: Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. was elected at vice-president of ETS, which means that he is in line to be the next president of ETS. You can read more about it in SBTS’s news release. As many of you know, Dr. Mohler is the president of the institution where I serve, and we are very grateful for his leadership. We are looking forward to his leadership at ETS in the days ahead. Congratulations, Dr. Mohler!

ABC News reports on female survivors of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California. In the video above, you will see one woman describe what heroic young men did at the critical moment. She describes it this way:

There were multiple men that got on their knees and pretty much blocked all of us with their back towards the shooter, ready to take a bullet for any single one of us.

Abigail Shrier of The Wall Street Journal also writes about the men who helped others to safety during those terrifying and chaotic moments. She attributes their heroism to “masculinity.” She writes:

This is the masculinity we so often hear denigrated. It takes as its duty the physical protection of others, especially women. This masculinity doesn’t wait for verbal consent or invitation to push a person out of harm’s way. It sends hundreds of firefighters racing up the Twin Towers to save people they’ve never met. And it sent Sgt. Ron Helus of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office rushing into Borderline Bar and Grill, where the shooter was waiting for him. “I gotta go handle a call,” Helus had just told his wife over the phone. “I love you.”

The way so many women have a natural ease with caring for children, so, too, do many men have the instinct to protect and serve. We can harness it, but it doesn’t proceed automatically. It is a refined sort of masculinity that must be developed and praised. The military has done this for years. Police academies and fire departments do too. Only the educated classes have learned to sneer at it. Would that they never need it.

This is the kind of masculinity we can all get behind. Read the rest here.

“So be strong, act like a man.” –1 Kings 2:2

“Act like men, be strong.” –1 Cor. 16:13

]]>35571Stan Lee wrote the stories of my youthhttp://www.dennyburk.com/stan-lee-wrote-the-stories-of-my-youth/
Mon, 12 Nov 2018 21:03:13 +0000http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=35556I just saw the news about the death of comic book mogul Stan Lee. I don’t know much about Stan Lee the man, but I do know something about the characters and worlds he created within Marvel comics. Lee’s stories and characters were a big part of my childhood. He didn’t create stereotypical superheroes. He humanized them in ways that a kid like me could relate to. The New York Times describes his work this way:

Under Mr. Lee, Marvel revolutionized the comic book world by imbuing its characters with the self-doubts and neuroses of average people, as well an awareness of trends and social causes and, often, a sense of humor.

In humanizing his heroes, giving them character flaws and insecurities that belied their supernatural strengths, Mr. Lee tried “to make them real flesh-and-blood characters with personality,” he told The Washington Post in 1992.

“That’s what any story should have, but comics didn’t have until that point,” he said. “They were all cardboard figures.”

This is absolutely correct, and it is why Lee’s signature character Spider-Man captured my imagination when I was in the fourth grade.

That year, my family had just left a town I loved and had moved to a small river town in east Texas. The transition was particularly difficult for me. I didn’t fit in. The other kids called me a “city-slicker.” I had never been in a fight or even seen one before moving to that town, but I got punched in the nose on almost the first day of school after we moved there. The two years we spent in that town were difficult for me in many ways. I just didn’t fit in. And in that town, the other boys liked to fight kids who didn’t fit in.

Not long after we moved to town, NBC started a new line-up on its weekly Saturday morning cartoons (anyone remember those?). And one of the new programs was “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,” which Stan Lee himself narrated. Peter Parker was not a jock or a tough guy. He was a nerd. He got picked on and bullied at school. He didn’t fit in. That all changed after a freak accident resulted in his acquiring superhuman powers. But he didn’t stop being a nerd after that. He was still awkward, quirky Peter Parker. He just had a new side of himself that no one else could see. And through it all, he was good humored about it. He was no Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent. He was a dirt-poor, joke-cracking nerd with secret powers. What’s not to like about that? I know I did.

That Saturday morning cartoon was a gateway to Spider-Man comics and to the entire Marvel universe. I liked all the Marvel characters, but my favorites were Spider-Man, Captain America, and the Avengers. I could not have imagined then how big those characters would become in my adulthood to movie-goers around the world. I loved those characters and still do. I’m not even close to getting tired of these movies. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a golden age for film (sorry Ross Douthat).

Stan Lee was 95 years old when he died. He will be missed, but his characters live on. And I will always be grateful for them. Excelsior.

Psalm 90:10, 12

As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away…
So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

]]>35556A Hope Not on Offer in the Gnostic Gospelshttp://www.dennyburk.com/a-hope-not-on-offer-in-the-gnostic-gospels/
Mon, 12 Nov 2018 13:32:45 +0000http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=35543Yesterday, I finished Elaine Pagels’ moving memoir Why Religion? A Personal Story(Ecco, 2018). If Pagels’ name is unfamiliar to the general reader, it is not to scholars of the Bible and early Christianity. Pagels has been writing provocative books about early Christianity and its interface with Gnosticism since the 1970’s. Her 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels was a popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi library that became a publishing sensation. Her work in this book caught the attention of a popular readership and garnered numerous awards.

She has written many other books since then, so her scholarly work has been well-known for decades now. And yet, this latest book, Why Religion?, seems different. It is a deeply personal narrative of her life, not just as a scholar but as a wife and a mother. Her account reveals that her work as an author has been deeply impacted by her own personal search for meaning in the midst of suffering. And her suffering has indeed been profound.

Pagels says that she experienced an evangelical conversion experience at a Billy Graham crusade during her high school years. That faith was short lived. After a Jewish friend died, the evangelical doctrine of hell became a stumbling block for her. She just couldn’t believe that judgment awaits people who die as non-Christians. As she entered college and then graduate studies, she maintained an interest in religion but not in the evangelical faith she encountered at the Graham crusade. She began to drift further and further into the theological left. Not only does she reject the divine inspiration of scripture, but she also finds spiritual nourishment from the heretical Gnostic texts that have been the subject of her scholarly work.

In 1969, Pagels married renowned phycisit Heinz Pagels. It is clear that Heinz was the love of her life. After suffering through a long period of infertility, she finally conceived and gave birth to a son named Mark—who became the apple of both her and Heinz’s eyes. They found out not long after Mark’s birth that he had a heart condition that was potentially life-threatening. Over time, the condition worsened, and the doctors told the Pagels that there were no treatments that could heal Mark. At only five years old, this precious son died.

Elaine and Heinz were devastated. And yet, they pressed on. Their son’s death did not drive them apart but actually brought them together. They had already adopted a daughter by the time of Mark’s death, and they were grateful for the life they still had together. Then the next year, tragedy struck again when Heinz died as a result of a mountain climbing accident. This left Elaine alone to raise their adopted daughter and a newly adopted son.

Much of the rest of the book is the story of Pagels’ wrestling with her own grief and sorrow over the loss of her husband and son. These losses seem to drive her even further away from any orthodox version of the Christian faith. On the contrary, she becomes a formidable opponent and debunker of that faith. She draws inspiration from Gnostic gospels and from revisionist readings of canonical texts. She dismisses out of hand any notion of Jesus’ death for our sins or his bodily resurrection. She claims that Jesus himself never actually said that he died for people’s sins and that such an idea was an innovation of the Apostle Paul.

All of this leaves her coping with her loss in a humanistic way. There is no providential meaning to suffering. There is no resurrection of Jesus, and there is no resurrection of anyone else in the future. The body dies, people grieve, and who knows what happens to our spirits on the other side of dying? Pagels says that she is happy to have come through her grief with her life intact, but still she cannot bear witness to gospel hope. She has none.

Pagels left it all on the field in this book. She is a great writer and opened up her life and suffering in a way that is unusual from a scholar. And yet, I felt at the end of the book a kind of sadness of my own. I grieved to read of the deaths of her son and husband. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like to have lived through it like she did—much less to relive it all in the writing of this book.

More than anything I wish I could tell her that the Christ she heard about in that Billy Graham crusade really is alive. He is seated at the right hand of his Father right now. One day he will come back again to make all the sad things come untrue. And he offers real life and hope and peace to anyone who will repent of their sin and trust in Christ alone for salvation. Jesus’ arms are open wide for any who would come, and he alone can make sense of and redeem all our suffering.

That is a hope that is not on offer in the Gnostic gospels, but it is indeed the hope of the gospel and indeed of the entire world.

The Washington Post reports that a man wishes to self-identify as twenty years younger than he actually is. Not only that, he wants the change reflected on his birth certificate. From the report:

Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old who feels like he’s in his 40s… is asking a court in his hometown of Arnhem, southeast of Amsterdam, to change his birth certificate so that it says he took his first breath on March 11, 1969, rather than on March 11, 1949. The judges heard his case on Monday and promised they would render a verdict in the next several weeks.

Ratelband sees his request as no different from a petition to change his name or the gender he was assigned at birth — and isn’t bothered that this comparison might offend transgender people, whose medical needs have been recognized by the American Medical Association. It comes down to free will, he maintains.

“Because nowadays, in Europe and in the United States, we are free people,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “We can make our own decisions if we want to change our name, or if we want to change our gender. So I want to change my age. My feeling about my body and about my mind is that I’m about 40 or 45.”

Folks are already dismissing Ratebland’s request as different from and offensive to transgender people. But the obvious question is why? In what way is this different from transgenderism? A closer look reveals that there isn’t very much of a difference at all.

According to transgender ideology, when a person feels himself to be something other than his biological sex, then his psychological identity trumps his biological reality. Ratebland is requesting the same consideration with respect to age. He feels himself to be younger than his chronological age. He’s simply asking for his psychological identity to be recognized over his chronological reality. If it is wrong and oppressive to refuse to recognize the gender identity of the transgender, then why is it any less wrong and oppressive to refuse to recognize the chronological identity of the trans-aged?

Of course, I am not at all supporting Ratebland’s claim. I’m simply pointing out that the identity claim that he is making is no different than the one being made by a transgender person. If you accept one, consistency demands that you accept the other. To accept the one while refusing the other is… well… inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst. Either a person’s self-identification trumps all other objective indications or it does not. You can’t have it both ways.

But there will be some who will try. Just watch. They will embrace transgender claims while rejecting out-of-hand trans-aged claims, and they will embrace the inconsistency without acknowledging it as such. How do we know? Because that is how they responded to the transracial claims of Rachel Dolezal. I expect nothing different here.

Transgender ideology is a black hole of illogic, sucking toward it all manner of unreasonableness and contradiction. It is a testimony to the power of LGBT propaganda that so few people in our culture detect the contradictions. But the contradictions are no less salient simply because so many people refuse to see them. The inconsistency is a real and obvious, and it serves no one to pretend otherwise.

The American Academy of Pediatricians argues in a new policy statement that spanking is bad for children (see video above). NBC News describes the report this way:

Parents who hit their kids may believe that a swat “just gets their attention” or imposes old-fashioned discipline, but spanking in fact makes behavior worse than it was before and can cause long-term harm, pediatricians said Monday.

The American Academy of Pediatrics strengthened its advice against corporal punishment in update guidelines, saying it makes kids more aggressive and raises the risk of mental health issues.

“Experiencing corporal punishment makes it more, not less, likely that children will be defiant and aggressive in the future,” the group says in its new guidelines to pediatricians.

“There’s no benefit to spanking,” said Dr. Robert Sege of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, who helped write the guidelines.

I think there are a number of problems with this policy, not the least of which is its definition of corporeal punishment. The policy defines corporeal punishment as “noninjurious, open-handed hitting with the intention of modifying child behavior.” If the definition of corporeal punishment basically includes all forms of open-handed hitting, then the definition is taking into account forms of punishment that would not be the kind of careful, loving discipline that would be a benefit to children.

Although parents sometimes misuse or over-use spanking, does science really show that ordinary spanking of persistently disobedient children causes irreparable harm? The answer may be found by examining the quality of the research behind this claim.

It turns out that most research against spanking uses methods so flawed that such studies would be rejected if they were being used to halt a medical procedure, such as chemotherapy for combating cancer. The anti-spanking research suffers from three major fallacies or defects that invalidate its conclusions.

I encourage you to read the detailed report from the American College of Pediatricians. When these flaws are taken into account, it is clear that the research does not in fact support the conclusions of those who oppose spanking.

In any case, Americans have widely divergent views on the matter. Even evangelical Christians have seen some division over the issue over the years. In light of this, Christians need to be ready to engage this discussion in a biblical way, insisting on the protection of children from abuse while also pursuing biblical truth concerning discipline.

For Christians, the key texts on this issue are in the book of Proverbs. Here’s a sample:

Proverbs 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.

Proverbs 29:15 The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.

Proverbs 23:13-14 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.

Proverbs 22:15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.

At first blush, these texts read like a straightforward endorsement of corporal punishment. While theologian William Webb has argued forcefully that they are not, Tom Schreiner has shown that such revisionist applications of the text are incorrect.

For a really helpful interpretation of the “spanking” texts in Proverbs, I recommend a short article by Paul Wegner titled, “Discipline in the Book of Proverbs: ‘To Spank or Not To Spank?’.” In this article, Wegner argues that the Proverbs in question reveal six different levels of discipline available to parents, one of which is corporal punishment (#6).

Andy Naselli has a thoroughly biblical look at the issues in an article published in 2013 titled “Training children for their good.” Naselli argues that the Bible supports the use of spanking as a legitimate form of discipline. There is careful discussion of the relevant biblical texts, especially the Proverbs. If you’re looking for a solid, biblically formed work on spanking, you need to read this. In fact if you don’t read anything else, you should read this one. Here is the outline of his argument:

Introduction

A. Seven Propositions about Discipline from Hebrews 12:4-11

1. God disciplines his children (Heb 12:5-7, 10).

2. God disciplines all his children (Heb 12:6, 8).

3. God disciplines only his children (Heb 12:6-8).

4. Discipline is training: God disciplines his children for their good (Heb 12:10-11).

5. Discipline seems unpleasant and painful (Heb 12:11).

6. God’s children should endure God’s discipline (Heb 12:5, 7, 9).

7. God’s disciplining his children compares to human parents’ disciplining their children (Heb 12:5, 7-10).

Q3. Do the proverbs about using the rod refer to young men rather than children?

Q4. Is spanking an obsolete part of the Mosaic law-covenant in the Old Testament?

Q5. Is spanking antithetical to the gospel?

C. Concluding Application

1. Pray for your children.

2. Evangelize your children.

3. Use multiple levels of discipline.

4. Love your children, and tell them and show them that you love them.

5. Beware of two extremes: (a) not disciplining and (b) over-disciplining.

6. Fathers, take the lead in discipline.

7. Learn how to discipline each of your children most effectively.

8. Distinguish between family rules and the Bible.

9. Be humble about parental discipline; don’t be proud and judgmental.

10. Persevere with a long-term view that trusts God’s word.

4. Recommended Resources

There is much more that can and should be said about this, but these writers conclude that the Bible allows corporal punishment that is non-abusive and that does not cause bodily harm. If you are interested in reading more, I recommend the resources that Naselli provides at the end of his article.

Remember that there is no substitute for a parent’s loving discipline of their children. It is the job of parents to commit themselves to this challenging work as an expression of love for their children.

“He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” -Proverbs 13:24

]]>35520John Piper on Pride, Social Media, and the Nashville Statementhttp://www.dennyburk.com/john-piper-on-pride-social-media-and-the-nashville-statement/
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 04:26:08 +0000http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=35513Ten years ago, John Piper delivered an address at the founding of Bethlehem College and seminary. Today, he offers some reflections on the ten year anniversary of that address and expands and corrects some things from ten years ago. I think the whole thing is worth reading, but his comments about social media and pride are particularly pointed and needed. He writes:

What I did not foresee ten years ago was the normalizing of proud behaviors that would once have been considered disqualifying for ministry, or at least for maturity. This process of normalizing self-exaltation has been energized by social media. Virtue signaling on Twitter, for example, is pervasive: “I am among the few people right now who are praying about this tragedy rather than commenting on it.” “Take note, everyone, that my heart is broken over this injustice.” Even more blatant is retweeting other people’s praise of your book or article. When Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth,” it does not mean, “Make other people the mouthpiece of your own self-praise.”

Two other symptoms of the normalization of strutting one’s self have emerged. One is the childish antics of grown-up NFL players after they do something outstanding. The gesticulating self-congratulation would have been regarded as disgustingly immature just a few decades ago. Finally, and perhaps most damaging of all since I spoke ten years ago, we now have a president of the United States who seems incapable of giving any evidence of humility or fallibility or interdependence.

Therefore, if I were giving that lecture today, my concerns about the insidious nature of pride in public life (including the pastorate) would be even greater, and the subtleties of its influence would need more analysis and resistance.

Piper also noted that ten years ago he did not comment on the transgender revolution that is now overtaking our culture. He writes:

The cultural cancer of sexual disintegration and perversion has metastasized more quickly than most of us foresaw. The new forms of cancerous growth are both tragic and ludicrous. Perhaps most prominent at the moment is the transgender phenomenon — men and women wanting to be a different sex than they are. This impulse is part of the wider and deeper sense in the modern soul that our identity is not given by God or nature or grace, but rather is decreed by our own sovereign selves…

If I were giving the ten-year-old lecture today, I would have driven a stake in the ground along the lines of the Nashville Statement on sexuality.

]]>35513Why the “Equality Act” is a disaster for religious liberty, and why we may be facing the disaster very soon.http://www.dennyburk.com/why-the-equality-act-is-a-disaster-for-religious-liberty-and-why-we-may-be-facing-the-disaster-very-soon/
Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:54:56 +0000http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=35510The Associated Press reports on what the Democrats intend to do if they take back the House of Representatives this November. In short, they plan to introduce legislation that would be the biggest assault on religious liberty in our nation’s history. From the report:

Just days ahead of a midterm election they hope will deliver them a majority, House Democrats are promising to prioritize anti-discrimination legislation that would for the first time establish widespread equal rights protections for LGBTQ individuals.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently said she would introduce the Equality Act as one of her first orders of business if Democrats retake the House in November. Pelosi made the announcement at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, telling the crowd the issue of equal rights for the LGBTQ community is “personal.”

The 1964 Civil Rights Act already bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The Equality Act, if passed, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the law and expand those protections beyond the workplace. It would outlaw gender discrimination in places like restaurants and retail shops, in seeking housing, using health care and social services, applying for a loan or participating in the jury selection process.

Under current federal law, sexual orientation and gender identity are not protected classes, but they would be if this bill were to become law.

What does this have to do with religious liberty? It is not as if there is widespread discrimination against LGBT people in public accommodations. No restaurant or business is hanging a sign that says “straights and cisgender only.” So that is not the intent of the “Equality Act.” Rather, the intent of the bill is to target the last hold-outs to the LGBT revolution—religious people. How do we know this? Because the bill takes explicit aim at religious people. From the AP report:

A provision in the bill forbids any employer or retailer from using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993, to justify withholding services based on gender or sexual orientation. The law, which received bipartisan support, barred the government from interfering with the rights of religious practitioners. But more recently the law has been used to protect the rights of business owners to refuse service based on religious beliefs. In one 2014 case, the Supreme Court found that chain craft store Hobby Lobby, founded by religious evangelicals, didn’t have to provide its employees with contraception coverage for religious reasons.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act—which used to enjoy bipartisan support—has now become the boogey man of the left. The left wants to destroy this federal law and force religious people to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage and sexuality.

For example, if this bill were to become law, Christian business owners in the wedding industry would be forced to participate in gay weddings. Christian colleges would be forced to house students according to their gender identity. The list of religious liberty violations would be virtually endless.

The truth of the matter is that Democrats have very little chance of getting such a bill passed in the Senate, much less of getting the current president to sign it if they did. Nevertheless, this bill signals that one side of the culture war wishes the total subjugation of the other. They will run roughshod over the religious consciences of their fellow citizens. And because public opinion have shifted dramatically in favor of LGBT rights over the years, eventually this bill (or one like it) will become law.

Unless something dramatic changes in the drift of public opinion, the future of religious liberty on these issues is going to depend in part on the magnanimity of gay marriage supporters

Yet there is very little evidence of “magnanimity” on the part of those who support the “Equality Act.” On the contrary, there is evidence that many of them would like to see traditional marriage supporters get their comeuppance. A scorched-earth policy may very well be in the offing with traditional marriage supporters getting the biggest burn. Will there be room for compromise?

About six years ago, Robert George wrote something that has proven to be prophetic.

There is, in my opinion, no chance—no chance—of persuading champions of sexual liberation (and it should be clear by now that this is the cause they serve), that they should respect, or permit the law to respect, the conscience rights of those with whom they disagree. Look at it from their point of view: Why should we permit “full equality” to be trumped by bigotry? Why should we respect religions and religious institutions that are “incubators of homophobia”? Bigotry, religiously based or not, must be smashed and eradicated. The law should certainly not give it recognition or lend it any standing or dignity.

Can we really expect the sexual revolutionaries to be magnanimous toward those they regard as bigoted? The reintroduction of the “Equality Act” tells us that the answer is no. Why would the sexual revolutionaries make accommodations for the consciences of those they regard as bigots?

What does all of this mean? It means that Christians and other conjugal marriage supporters need to direct great energy to obtaining every religious liberty accommodation possible while there is still time. It may be that the moment is passing us by, and that makes the matter all the more urgent.

It also means for Christians that we need to be ready for a new reality. We need to be ready to love our neighbors and our enemies and to bear witness in a culture that is increasingly hostile toward us. Private citizens may someday face fines and other penalties for their biblical beliefs about homosexuality and transgenderism. Our churches may eventually lose tax exempt status. Any number of negative outcomes are possible in the approaching conflagration.

Ours will likely be a costly love and a costly witness. But this is precisely the kind of discipleship that Jesus has called all of us to, and it will be worth it in the end (Matt. 16:25).

We’ve been singing “Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right” at our church in recent weeks. I have to say that the words and music to this are really special. It is written as a song for saints who are suffering. Which means that it is written for all of us. Here are the words:

VERSE 1
Whate’er my God ordains is right,
His holy will abideth;
I will be still whate’er He does
And follow where He guideth.
He is my God, though dark my road;
He holds me that I shall not fall;
And so, to Him I leave it all,
And so, to Him I leave it all.

VERSE 2
Whate’er my God ordains is right,
He never will deceive me;
He leads me by the proper path,
I know He will not leave me.
I take, content, what He has sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away;
And patiently I wait His day,
And patiently I wait His day.

VERSE 3
Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Though now this cup in drinking
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it all, unshrinking.
My God is true each morn anew;
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart;
And pain and sorrow shall depart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.

VERSE 4
Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet I am not forsaken.
My Father’s care is ‘round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall,
And so, to Him I leave it all,
And so, to Him I leave it all.

Thank you Matt Merker and Keith Getty for the music. Thank you Bob Kauflin for the definitive performance at T4G 2018. And thank you Father for Samuel Rodigast, who gave us these beautiful words over 250 years ago.

]]>35506Fact-checking the paper of record on its fabulist claims about transgenderismhttp://www.dennyburk.com/fact-checking-the-paper-of-record-on-its-fabulist-claims-about-transgenderism/
Wed, 24 Oct 2018 13:17:10 +0000http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=35503I have marveled this week at the level of distortion in straight news reporting about transgenderism. It all started with a report in The New York Times about the Trump administration’s plans to reverse an Obama-era directive. The distortion starts in the very first sentence of the report:

The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

Let’s just fact-check this one sentence. How many claims are in error here? All of them.

1. The administration is not considering a new definition of “gender.” This is an error and needs to be retracted by The New York Times. The administration is actually considering how to undo something the Obama administration did in 2014. The Obama administration unilaterally changed the meaning of the word “sex” in federal statutes like Title IX, which prohibit discrimination based on “sex.” The statutes say nothing about gender.

2. This is not the “most drastic move yet” on the part of the government. The “most drastic move” was when the Obama administration unilaterally changed the meaning of the word “sex” in those statutes. President Obama decreed that the word “sex” was no longer a biological reality (as the framers of the law intended) but a psychological one. Obama made it so that “sex” would be treated as the same thing as gender identity. He rewrote the law by forcing the government to interpret the terms in ways that the framers did not intend. It was a radical, immoral move on the part of the Obama administration, but it wasn’t reported as such when it happened in 2014. The Trump administration is simply putting things back to where they were before 2014. That’s all. It’s not radical. It’s simply interpreting the law as it was meant to be interpreted.

3. Transgender people are not a protected class under federal law. President Obama tried to make them a protected class by redefining the terms, but the law actually doesn’t do that. Go read Title IX. You will find nothing about transgenderism in it. It’s just not there, and the Times ought to acknowledge that.

The New York Times report goes on conflating “sex” and “gender” as if they are synonyms. The author of the article doesn’t even seem to understand that there is a difference between the terms “sex” and “gender.” As a result, the report is a muddle of misinformation. That misinformation has been picked up and amplified by readers across the country as evidence of mistreating gender-confused persons. For example:

Grieving with our trans neighbors and siblings today. You are a blessing. Your body is a gift to this world. I pray you feel a sense of God’s love and delight in you today. And I hope you know millions of people are for you. https://t.co/SjcL4fwC4q

Transgenderism is not a body-affirming ideology. On the contrary, it’s a body-denying ideology. It says that there is something wrong with the body and that the body needs to be reshaped through destructive surgeries and hormone “therapies.” It harms bodies.

Likewise, recognizing the biological definition of “sex” in federal statutes is a body-affirming move. What the Obama administration did was a body-denying move, and now there is a chance that it might be undone.

It’s not inhumane or discriminatory to recognize the biological difference between male and female, which is what “sex” refers to in those statutes. This is not radical. What President Obama did was both radical and wrong. I’m grateful that this particular feature of the previous administration may be rolled-back.

The distorted propaganda surrounding transgenderism has corrupted straight news reporting on a scale that I have never seen before. These reports are remarkable for their unvarnished, unselfconscious inaccuracy. When it comes to transgenderism, there is so much irrationality masquerading as straight news. It is a testimony to the power of their bias that reporters cannot detect their own inconsistencies.